I would like to setup automatic backups to a Seagate Desktop External Harddrive. I'd back up both "C" and "D" internal drives on an automatic nightly backup. Can I set this up in the Windows 7 Utility or must I use the Seagate program . I'm hoping to bypass the Seagate program partly because it has a 100mB system reserve partition which fills up rapidly and stops further backing up until reformatted. Thanks for your consideration.

You can use anything that will do the job for you, including Windows Backup and Restore. The thing I don't like about the Windows 7 backup utility is that it packs all the backup files into ZIP files, so it is not what is called a one to one backup, where the file structure is duplicated in the backup location for easy spot checking and comparison with the originals. Its doing that because 7 is pulling data from all over the computer so its good in a sense that it might get something you'd forget otherwise to backup and bad in a sense that its much more difficult to verify that it actually got everything and determine where it is exactly and hope that it was all "packed" in the zip files properly so it will restore properly.

So if you're ok with what I call the verification limitation, it will otherwise do a scheduled backup for you. Microsoft also has a program called SyncToy which you might want to check out. It cal also be run on a schedule and has more options pertaining to the type of backup that may fit best to your usage habits. For example I do a pure syncronization so only the current directories are reflected in the backup and its a one to one backup so I can actually access files from either location and save them there and they will be syncronized with the other location during the next run. If I were the type who perhaps suddenly realized I screwed up and need the version of the file I was working on 3 days ago, I would not use syncronization because it would already be replaced by a later version and I'd be out of luck.

One thing I would use Win 7 for though is to make an image of the system partition and just keep that handy and then maybe every once in a while when a big change is expected or there have been a bunch of little changes, do another image of the system partition (before and after in the case of big change).